


The Art of Maintenance

by one_flying_ace



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: HP: EWE, M/M, Post-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 15:06:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_flying_ace/pseuds/one_flying_ace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There wasn’t anywhere else for him to go, when he stopped to think about it, halfway down the street outside the Ministry. Grimmauld Place was dark and gloomy, but after he’d remembered the passwords - for the new wards, layered over the old broken ones - he found a bedroom with the furniture still covered in dust sheets, and slept for a day once he’d fallen into the musty-smelling bed.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Maintenance

Harry went from the battle straight to the Ministry, and didn’t really stop for a while. Sleep was naps on the small sofa in the office he’d been given, while everyone was scrambling around figuring out who was in charge, or at least knew what they were doing. By the end of the fifth week he was sick of the sight of the place, and he walked out after spending the day poring over reports about the Death Eaters still at large.

There wasn’t anywhere else for him to go, when he stopped to think about it, halfway down the street outside the Ministry. Grimmauld Place was dark and gloomy, but after he’d remembered the passwords - for the new wards, layered over the old broken ones - he found a bedroom with the furniture still covered in dust sheets, and slept for a day once he’d fallen into the musty-smelling bed.

 

^^

 

It made it a little easier, having a home. And it really was his, now; the wizarding solicitors had sniffed a bit, but they’d let him sign all the paperwork, a tiny house elf climbing up and down ladders inside the briefcases they’d brought with them. She’d smiled when Harry asked - out of hearing - if she was happy working for them, feeling it was his duty as Hermione’s friend to check. 

“Mitty trained for this job,” she told him firmly, handing over a stack of land deeds. “Mitty _proud_ to have this job.”

So that was that. He’d inherited a lot more than the house, more property and land as well, although he knew about the money, the will scrawled out in Sirius’ shaky handwriting. Seeing Remus’ name as the inheritor, if Harry had died before Sirius, put a lump in his throat, but then it was signed, all done and legal. He bumped into Malfoy coming out of the same offices when he went for the final signing, and nodded to him, but they didn’t speak.

It meant he felt better about cleaning the house out, for real this time, getting rid of things for good. He didn’t think anyone would want some of the more revolting paintings, of Muggles being subdued or violent dwarvish battles, so he cast a _stupefy_ and then tossed them onto the fire in the drawing room, after scourgifying the chimney so the noxious smoke wouldn’t fill the room.

A lot of the dangerous stuff had been deal with when the Order was living there, but there were still some artefacts lurking around that needed attention; he put a barrier spell over some of them, the ones he needed help with, and destroyed the rest down to ashes. Some of the furniture went that way too, some pieces that had already been broken up and some that felt wrong, like they’d been transfigured at some point.

It left him with some gaps, and the decor was a shambles, mouldy or rotten in places, but it didn’t make him want to burn the whole house down any more, so it was a start.

Back at the office it was a bit awkward to begin with, now the major work of the war was over. No one knew what to do with him, really. He wasn’t officially an Auror, but there wasn’t a single person willing to tell him to get out, so in the end Shacklebolt formally invested him and half a dozen others in a very brief ceremony.

“We’ll go through the rest of it later, the tests and things,” the Minister said, once their names were all recorded on the proper scrolls, “but that’s enough for now. Can’t argue with the work you’ve been doing - or what you’ve already done.” 

All it seemed to mean was that the paperwork people had been unsure about giving him suddenly landed on his desk, waiting for an official Auror signature or attention, so when someone mentioned that the formal pardon needed presenting to the Malfoys, Harry stuck his head over the stacks of paper and offered to do it.

“We don’t even know if they’re still in the country,” Ron pointed out. “And the wards are still up; don’t know about you, but I don’t bloody fancy testing them again.” 

“They’re here,” Harry said, shrugging into his cloak. “I saw Malfoy last week, he’s here at least.”

He picked the official scroll up from Shacklebolt, then Apparated to the nearest point to the Malfoy estate. It was a ten minute walk from there to the Manor gates, and he didn’t try to hide his approach; getting in would be a problem, even if he was prepared to try, so he’d have wait at the gates for someone to come down anyway.

It was a nice afternoon, getting near the end of summer, and Harry was almost disappointed when he saw the gates up ahead. Draco waited by them, swinging a portion of the wrought iron curls outwards so he could step partway through onto the driveway as Harry approached.

“Potter.”

“Malfoy.” Harry pulled the scroll from his cloak pocket and handed it over; after a moment’s hesitation, Draco took it, flinching a little when he turned it over and the Ministry seal was uppermost.

“It’s notice of an official pardon,” Harry said, when Draco made no move to open it. “You and your parents, there won’t be- none of you will be arrested.”

He’d seen Lucius briefly, in the battle, looking like a man haunted, wand flickering as it spat out spells, all of them harmlessly hitting stone or the air. He’d argued to the other Aurors that Narcissa and Draco had helped him, and there was no evidence against Lucius anyway, but privately he thought there wasn’t much point in arresting him, not even as a Death Eater.

Even Ginny hadn’t been for arresting him, when some of the other Aurors, the ones who knew, mentioned it. “I might’ve been, once,” she said, when Harry asked her over a drink later on. “And I know I almost died, but I’ve seen enough to know that there’s worse out there than him; we should be tracking them down, the ones who tortured and killed for the fun of it. He’s- he’s small, compared to them.”

“Don’t expect me to be grateful,” Draco said now, but the sneer in it was weak, and his hand tightened around the scroll.

Harry snorted. “It never crossed my mind. Are your parents home?” Behind Draco the Manor looked empty and battered, the shutters covering most of the windows, thin lines of silver magic showing they were locked and the wards activated, and part of the roof was missing. What Harry could see of the garden looked overgrown, the hedges grown out into tangled messes.

Draco’s eyes narrowed. “For now, although I see why that’s your business, not any more,” he said icily, holding up the scroll.

“Your dad still needs to answer some questions.” Harry blew out a hard breath. “But we can sort that out later.” Draco just looked at him, still angry, and that was enough, he had a thousand things to do, sleep being the first one, and he had to make the same walk back to Apparate again; none of the Aurors had ever been invited to use the one by the Manor gates. “See you.”

“Wait.” Draco abruptly held out his hand, and the Ministry scroll vanished, replaced by another; when he gestured, Harry took it, carefully. “You might find these useful.”

Unrolling it far enough to scan the first few words, Harry frowned. “Cleaning spells?”

“The portraits talk.” When Harry just looked at him, Draco sighed, the brittle, angry edge gone, impatient fingers tapping on the metal of the gates, like he’d decided Harry meant it and had pulled back some of the loathing. “Some of his ancestors are mine too, they come and visit sometimes. I couldn’t help overhearing what you’re trying to do with the old place.”

No need to ask who Draco meant; the scroll snapped back into a tight coil and Harry nodded. “Thanks,” he said, awkwardly; Draco rolled his eyes, and the gate swung shut with a sharp click.

“Don’t mention it.”

Harry took a look at the tapestry when he got back, but it was black with age, most of the branches past the ones Sirius had shown him pretty much unreadable. _Scourgify_ took off a layer of dirt, but not much of it; in the end he unrolled Draco’s scroll and figured out how to cast some of the spells. By the time he’d cleaned enough away to show a few of the early nineteenth century faces the light was fading, and he had to light some of the candelabras to keep going.

The light they cast was weak, though, and when he went down to the kitchen for some food, the pathetic sandwich sat in the fridge made him long for Molly’s cooking again. There was nothing else, not even any cereal in the cupboards, and for some reason it was the last straw of the day.

“Is that the best you can do?” Harry yelled, letting out a solid chunk of frustration. “A pathetic sandwich and some dead spiders? You might as well _get out_ _now.”_ He snarled the last, slamming out of the kitchen and making for the front door, thinking about one of the pubs nearby, or even a take away, anything better than a soggy sandwich filled with limp cheese and wet ham.

He was halfway there when a faint rustle and the sound of furniture moving sent him racing up the stairs to the library, wand out, only to stop dead in the doorway and stare. The room was lit not by two small candelabras - small by Black standards - but by the great floating chandeliers, all three of them, making the room look three times as big and ten times as filthy. One of the little tables had opened up to twice the size, the top clean at least, and sat on it was a spread of real sandwiches and a tea set, the pot steaming gently ready for him.

“Better,” he said to the air, not really feeling guilty any more, and besides, he was too hungry to worry about it any more. The sandwiches were made of thick, soft, crusty bread, filled with roast chicken and delicate stuffing, the tea was hot and strong, and one of the old armchairs trundled over, dust pouring into the air from the cushion. It felt rude to say no, so Harry sat down carefully and started eating. 

 

^^ 

 

The Ministry was slowly emptying of people, something Harry only noticed when he stuck his head out of his office into the corridor outside to ask if anyone had seen Ron, and noticed half a dozen doors had vanished. At some point his office had expanded to twice the size, although that just meant there was more space for paperwork to build up.

“Lots of them were only here to help with the worst of the clean up,” Hermione said, when he dropped by. “They’ve gone home to sort their own lives out.”

“Lucky them,” Harry said with feeling, because he’d spent the day sorting through requests from families who had people missing, mostly Muggleborns, a few purebloods on the wrong side in the mix as well, but he didn’t think there was much hope for any of them.

“You can leave too,” Hermione pointed out. “You’ve done your bit.” Except he couldn’t, and they both knew that; she’d be leaving soon, off to Oxford to get her degree in some terrifyingly complicated magic, and then probably she’d come back, or go to the International Wizengamot instead, but Harry- he knew his place, where he’d do the most good.

He ate his lunch with her, that had been waiting for him in the kitchen that morning; a tub of hot stew - “warming charm built into the pot,” Hermione told him, leaning over in curiosity - with a fresh bread roll, and a selection of tiny cakes that he shared with her. The house was fighting back, refusing to let most of his cleaning charms stick or shrinking rooms down every time he tried to open them up, but Kreacher was at least grudgingly cooperating.

Hermione shooed him out a little after two, and he shut himself back in his office, steadily working through more paperwork; there’d been more of that than active work recently, although it wouldn’t last. He didn’t use the sofa in the corner much any more, not now there was a decent bed at Grimmauld Place, but sometimes the work carried him away.

He looked up when Dulcey stuck her head in and interrupted, waving a report slip, his spine cracking alarmingly. “Fire reported at the Malfoy Manor,” she said. “Want it?”

Harry nodded without asking who else was in the building; the clock on the desk said ten thirty, late enough he didn’t bother telling anyone else where he was going, just grabbed the report and Apparated. 

The fire was easy to find: the report had come in from the village, so he approached from that side, but he could’ve Apparated five miles away and still had no trouble. The garden wards let him in without too much effort, and he walked through the tangled mess of a dead rose garden to reach the source. It wasn’t a terribly _big_ fire, but the flames were brighter than a normal one, shot through with colours; sickly green and black, mostly, some blue at the edges every now and then.

Harry stood for a while, not really looking at anything, once he’d realised what the flames were eating up.

Draco was sat on a moss-covered stone bench, his hand clenched around a wand. He glanced up when Harry walked over to sit down next to him, but other than that didn’t say anything, face pinched and white. Harry wondered if he’d lowered the wards on purpose, knowing someone would turn up, but didn’t ask.

“I’d have sent them back,” he said eventually, when Harry had sat there long enough for the cold of the bench to seep through his robes, “but there wasn’t really enough, and they were all- mixed up.”

“I know.” Harry shivered, and that seemed to rouse Draco; he snapped his fingers and two cloaks draped over their shoulders, thick wool and fur edgings, silver clasps that did themselves up neatly around their necks. Harry stood and let it settle warmly around his body, tugged Draco up to do the same. They sat back down in silent agreement, closer now; Draco wasn’t leaving until the pile of bones had gone, and he wasn’t going to leave Draco sat there all night alone.

 

^^ 

 

There was a week of interviews after that, hard ones; a mixed bag of Death Eaters, people who were pretty much Death Eaters but didn’t have the Mark, and an assortment of nasty little flotsam who’d got dragged in with them. Harry questioned six, leaving feeling like he needed a _scourgify_ aiming at himself every time, but every shred of information helped, so he kept going back in.

Draco turned up at the Ministry on the last day; Harry dug out the appointment book one of the secretaries kept updated for him, and found a note saying _D. Malfoy, 13th September, three pm. Re: interview of L. Malfoy._ He handed the latest interview off to Hooper and Ron, and went down to the main hall to meet him.

Harry’s office felt much smaller with Draco in it, for all he sat stiffly in his chair like the appointment was an interrogation itself. “I received the Ministry’s owl, and understand you need to interview my father,” Draco began, tone formal. “Will I be able to accompany him here? He’s not- he can’t Apparate far, at the moment.”

Harry hesitated, but he’d offered, and Shacklebolt had agreed, so: “We can do it at the manor, if that’d be easier?”

“Why would you do that?” Draco’s lip curled, an echo of the old school arrogance, but it didn’t make Harry’s back go up any more. “Everyone else is getting dragged into one of the Ministry’s sordid little rooms, to have _veratiserum_ shoved down their necks.”

“If they’ve been arrested, yeah, we do. But he hasn’t been arrested. And because I can’t be arsed any more,” he added abruptly. Draco’s eyebrows went up, a little tension ebbing away. “Doesn’t it get boring, hating me because that’s what we did at school? Neither of us really picked a side, it just happened. It might’ve-” He stopped before he said it, unsure where it’d even come from, but Draco nodded.

“It might’ve been different,” he said, the stiffness shifting to a weary slouch that made Harry realise how much of the old Draco had gone. “I’d appreciate it if you could interview him at the Manor. As to the rest-”

“Don’t push it,” Harry said, because he’d argued against arresting Lucius, but the man had still been a Death Eater. “I’m not going to be vindictive, but he still needs interviewing, and we have rules. Truth spells first, and if I think it’s necessary for the rest, I’ll tell you.”

Draco’s lips went tight, but after a moment he nodded. “Fine. That’s fair.”

He didn’t stay long, once they’d settled the date and time, but he asked after Grimmauld Place, and seemed genuinely interested in the repairs Harry was doing; Harry found himself enjoying the brief chat, and went back to work in a much better mood.

 

^^

 

Things were oddly quiet again after that, as if they’d rooted out enough pockets of Dark supporters that they could afford to take a breather. Harry did paperwork, wrote reports, investigated the odd disturbance, and worked on Grimmauld Place. The ground and first floor were still problematic, but he’d sorted the attics after a few nasty evenings fighting off doxies and venomous frommels, and the bedrooms were coming along slowly. 

The afternoon before Lucius Malfoy’s interview he felt restless, unable to concentrate on anything. He poked around the Ministry looking for something more interesting than reports, got kicked out of Hermione’s office for distracting her, and finally went home with a stack of files that needed going through.

They got tossed onto a table in the drawing room, Harry suddenly tired of anything to do with paperwork, and he finished off the tapestry instead, until the whole thing gleamed like brand new thread. It’d opened out once he’d started cleaning it for real, until it was practically a forest, the portraits larger and clearer; the ones that weren’t little round char marks, at least.

Even that left him feeling unsettled, needing to do something else, but he didn’t fancy staying indoors any longer, not after all morning being stuck in the Ministry as well. He found Kreacher being unusually amiable, cleaning each of the portraits along the upstairs corridor and crooning to them quietly, so he swung on a cloak and left, Apparating once he was outside the wards.

Draco was in the gardens when Harry walked up, boots crunching softly every time he trod on a patch of gravel that hadn’t been overgrown by grass. He stood on the front drive, the remains of the fountain lying around him, one lone torso with its head still attached leaning down and looking sadly at the broken limbs. Draco span when Harry approached, startled.

“Can I help?”

“Not unless you know anything about seventeenth century fountains,” Draco snapped, and Harry grinned, pulling off his cloak and outer robe, dumping them to one side. Draco blinked at him.

“I probably know about as much as you do,” Harry said, looking pointedly at the mess of stone, “but I’ll give it a go.”

They worked for the rest of the afternoon, taking a couple of breaks to gulp down the lemonade Draco conjured, and by the time it got dark the statues were moving again. Not properly; most of them were still missing at least one limb, and the movements were jerky, uncoordinated, but it was getting there. 

“We should-” Draco started, but he shook his head when Harry paused in the middle of lifting a witch’s arm back into place to look over. “Never mind.” Several little lanterns appeared over their heads after that, casting a bright glow that meant Draco could see when Harry accidentally stuck a nose back on upside down, and could yell at him about it.    

By the time they were done Harry was ravenous, and he thought maybe Narcissa had stood on the front steps for a while, watching, but he hadn’t really been paying attention. Draco ordered dinner from an elf who popped up when he crooked a finger at the house, and five minutes later a picnic spread itself out on the grass, just when they’d caught their breath.

“Why are you even here,” Draco asked, halfway through a trifle. “I appreciate the help, I suppose, but I don’t think you visited just to help repair a fountain.”

The fact of Lucius’ interview hung in the air between them, heavy. Harry shrugged. “Do I need a reason to see a friend?”

“We’re not _friends_ ,” Draco said, stiff as a wet cat, but he didn’t take the trifle away when Harry went for another spoonful. They finished it off and then put the last touches on the fountain, tidying up the mortar and repairing the pipework, until the water came out properly again. It looked great, and even better when Draco sent a flurry of little witchlights scattering over the top, to send colours dancing over the spray.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Draco said, when they were at the gates. He put a hand on Harry’s arm, gripping tight for a moment; “Mother says thank you, by the way.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that without getting into a bigger conversation, and then didn’t seem the time; he nodded instead, and gave Draco’s shoulder a squeeze. “See you tomorrow.”

 

^^ 

 

In the morning he dressed with care, stopped by the Ministry briefly, and then Apparated up to the Manor. It was familiar ground now; Draco met him at the front door, not the gates, the fountain still on but only spouting water from one of the statues. For a second Harry wanted to hug him, but squashed it; they weren’t that sort of friends. 

Lucius was ready and presentable, at least, although from the look of his hair that was a recent change, the strands still damp and only partially brushed, his chin faintly pink from a shave. Narcissa nodded to Harry from the grand staircase when he walked in, but didn’t join them, leaving Draco to settle a tea tray on the table between two long sofas in one of the downstairs drawing rooms as they sat down.

Harry took a seat on one of the sofas, making sure his robes weren’t twisted and taking out a pad of paper and pen while Draco got Lucius settled. They sat together, a careful space between them, but it was still clear: you, and us. Except it wasn’t, not really, not with the way Draco’s eyes kept drifting away from his father to meet Harry’s.

“Ready,” he asked once they all had cups of tea, careful to keep his voice calm and neutral. He’d expected Draco to answer, but Lucius sat up straighter and nodded. Harry cast the truth spells wandlessly, watching carefully to make sure they held.

The other Aurors had written down questions they needed, or wanted, asking, and then they’d all sat together to combine them into as short a list as possible. Harry had been prepared to argue his way into being the one to do the interview, but to his surprise there’d only been a few protests, and half-hearted ones at that.

“You’re best placed,” Shacklebolt told him before he’d set off, but hadn’t explained further.

They went along at a fair speed, once Lucius got going. Once or twice the old arrogance slid back into his voice, but he answered clearly and carefully; the truth spells flickered now and again on little things, Lucius saving face but not exactly lying. And by now Harry was good at tells, sliding the questions away when Lucius - or Draco - flinched, coming at things from different directions until he had everything he’d been sent to get. It wasn’t pity, exactly, but they’d interrogated enough Death Eaters like him to know how to get the most out of them.

When Harry came to the end of the list he stopped. There was more, maybe, things to tie up loose details or flesh things out, but there was no point. Lucius had answered everyone’s questions twice over, and now he looked hollow, as if he’d been scraped out, more like a moving painting than a real man. He looked up when Narcissa opened the drawing room door and went to her, the truth spells sloughing away, Lucius leaning on her as they left. Draco stood abruptly and went to the window.

There was some tea left. Harry poured them both another cup, delicately fragranced, then decided against it; there was whiskey on the sideboard, one he recognised from Sirius’ late-night bouts of insomnia, and he took two healthy glasses over to Draco.

Neither of them spoke, the silence left once Lucius had stopped speaking settling around them.

Harry sipped his whiskey, feeling the warmth spread, and looked out at the gardens; someone, probably Draco, had begun clipping the hedges back into tidy rows. It occurred to Harry that there might be a garden at Grimmauld Place, looking like Merlin knew what. He looked over at Draco, to ask if he knew, and then both glasses went spinning onto a side table so Harry could wrap his arms around him. Draco heaved a great hiccuping sob, cheek wet against Harry’s, and crumpled into him.

He didn’t sob again, but Harry could feel him shaking; he said nothing and held on tightly, until Draco took a deep heaving breath and straightened up. He didn’t move away, though, and neither did Harry, leaving them very close; one of Draco’s hands came up to touch the side of his face gently. “Where are your glasses?”

“Um,” Harry said, bemused. “Hermione did a _patet oculis_ charm, I kept losing or breaking them.”

“Sensible,” Draco said, and sniffed, letting his hand drop away, and took a step back. Harry pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket; all his clothes seemed to have them in, since he’d put them away in the master bedroom wardrobe. Draco took it with a wry smile. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“We’re not at school any more,” Harry said, because he wasn’t sure which bit Draco was talking about, but that seemed to cover it all. “Sorry about-”

Draco cut him off. “Don’t apologise for doing your job, Potter. I should be- I _am_ grateful you allowed it to be done here, for what that’s worth. Probably nothing.”

The house was silent as Draco walked him out, no sign of Narcissa or Lucius. “Will they stay here, now?” Harry asked. The roof had been repaired, he’d noticed it on his way in, but the place still had a faint dilapidated air to it.

“I don’t think so. Mother wants to go abroad, and Father-” Draco laughed shortly, no mirth in it at all. “Father doesn’t really notice where he is. Today was the most animated I’ve seen him since-- Well.”

“Yeah.” At the door Harry shrugged back into his cloak and slung his bag over his shoulder, checking he had all of his notes. “There’s no restrictions on them leaving, but we’ll need to know their new address.”

“Of course.”

“And Draco- it’s worth something,” Harry added. Draco’s eyes widened, but Harry turned away and strode down the driveway before he could say anything. At the gates he risked a glance back; Draco still stood at the doors, watching him leave.

 

^^

 

Shacklebolt read carefully over his write-up of the interview, and asked some questions, but Harry got the sense the Minister was relieved nothing new and serious had come up that needed looking into.

“Adds to what we already know,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “without breaking new ground. What sense of him did you get?"

The memory of holding Draco as he cried silently rose up momentarily in Harry’s memory; with effort he thought about Lucius instead. “Broken,” he said, carefully. “He might’ve been on Voldemort’s side, but I’m not sure Malfoy knew what that meant, once He’d come back to take up power again. My sense is Lucius thought he’d be in control, but it didn’t turn out that way.” 

“He was a fool,” Shacklebolt said bluntly, but then he sighed. “But then there were lots of fools, on both sides. It was a good interview, Harry. Well done.”

Harry took that as a dismissal and stood, gathering his papers. Shacklebolt passed him his notes and then asked, abruptly;

“The younger one, Draco. How is he these days?”

“Seems okay,” Harry said, shoving the same memory away. “Why?”

“Is he likely to help us, if we needed anything else from them?”

_Depends who asks_ , Harry thought, but he didn’t say it. “Draco’s realistic,” he said instead, “he knows which side won, and what’s in his best interests. For what it’s worth, I still don’t think he’d have picked the side he did if there’d been a chance to do otherwise.”

Shacklebolt nodded; Harry had said much the same thing when the possibility of arresting all three Malfoys had come up. He walked out and back to his office, taking a detour to drop the write-up into Records first.

He spent the rest of the day slogging through more missing persons reports, trying to match them up with bodies recovered; it was a grim job, even at the best of times, except the best of times meant a body in an identifiable condition. Most of them weren’t.

Grimmauld Place was dank and cheerless when he walked in, Kreacher murmuring about filth from the kitchen even as he clattered around with pots and pans, and when Harry knelt to light the drawing room fire the chimney disgorged a gobbet of soot onto the weak flames. The smoke and soot went everywhere, sending him reeling.

For a long moment Harry lay on the grubby carpet and coughed, eyes streaming, lungs hurting.

No one would blame him if he moved out. It wasn’t an appealing house, even now the furniture didn’t try to kill you, and he had enough money to buy a nice new, clean flat somewhere. But Sirius had left it to him, and for one brief shining moment he’d thought they could live here together: a piecemeal family made of leftovers, but it would’ve been theirs, and now it was _his_.

 

^^

 

For two days after that he worked from home and waged war on the house, peeling wallpaper in great swathes, stripping cracked varnish off the floorboards, scraping off rotten plaster. Scouring spells went banging up each chimney to clear the flues, the soot and ash that fell out ruthlessly banished. Kreacher turned out several tins of oil when Harry demanded some, and he went round each room directing a stream of it at every hinge and handle.

Every spell he cast had real anger behind it, magic snapping out into the rooms and leaving no space for the house to fight back. Warped floorboards straightened themselves out again and settled into place, cracked window panes shivered themselves crystal clear again, and bed covers slunk away to the cellars where Kreacher had three giant tubs going, bubbles resting on his ears and a curiously happy expression on his face.

Eventually Harry stopped for a breather, taking stock. It wasn’t perfect; there were gaps in the plaster where it was too damaged or rotten to repair itself, the woodwork all needed revarnishing, and he’d need to repair or replace most of the furniture, but it was finally looking like somewhere he wanted to live because of the house itself, not the associations.

 

^^

 

Draco sent an owl not long after, with a letter asking him what on earth he’d been doing that made half the portraits run for cover in the Malfoy paintings. It started off sharp but was chatty by the end of it, like halfway through Draco had forgotten completely that they’d hated each other for seven-ish years. Harry grinned and sent a note back, asking him to pop over and see for himself, when he had time; despite the repairs the Manor was still mostly closed off, and however bad Grimmauld Place was, he’d never had a Dark Lord living there.

Several difficult cases had him in and out of the Ministry on long cases for a while, until two weeks had gone past and he wanted his own bed with an almost physical ache. He snatched a nap at work and wrapped up the last arrest, popped in to see the mediwizards about a nasty cut on his arm, and Apparated home.

For once the lights were on, flames burning steadily in their lamps; enough were lit that the house glowed, and now instead of merely highlighting how dismal it was, the light reflected off polished picture frames and richly varnished floorboards. He’d snatched time to finish the plastering, ordering raw materials from a shop in Hempwell Alley and brewing it up himself, going carefully over every gap and hole until the rooms looked like new.

He’d done the most work in the drawing room, driven by memories of sitting in there talking late into the night with Sirius. The wallpaper had been in decent shape, so he’d just cleaned it up and got it to duplicate across the walls, with some persuasion; now it looked rich and wondrous, flowers spreading open when he walked in. The panelling had taken ages to repair, and he’d had to resort to asking some of the stuffier portraits what the carvings were meant to be, but it’d been worth it. Harry looked down, and frowned; the old carpet had rolled itself out again and slid underneath the furniture.

It was an ugly thing, like a great smear of old blood lying across the wooden floorboards he’d spent hours painstakingly scrubbing and restaining, but it gave of an air of trying to hide under the chairs, like a dog that’d been kicked but still wanted to stay. “Fine,” Harry told it, “but you’re getting cleaned. After I’ve eaten.”

Abruptly Harry realised he had no idea where the food was actually coming from, but before he could shout for Kreacher to ask, the great rolling boom that meant someone was knocking on the front door sounded through the house. Harry frowned, heading downstairs; he’d dropped the strongest wards, so it was possible to find the house nowadays, but not many people knew that.

Draco stood on the step, hair a tangled mess, robes askew. “I need your help,” he said, before Harry got the door all the way open.

They’d apparated back to the Manor and were halfway down the drive before Harry thought to ask, but by then he could pretty much tell anyway, exhaustion falling away and replaced by adrenaline. A great miasma of magic covered the house, thinner in places but then clumped so dark he couldn’t see the building in others, even with the garden lights, casting a gloomy shadow over the lawns nearest the house. His wand slid into his hand and he stopped by the fountain, Draco next to him.

A trap, Draco explained, probably prepared for some unsuspecting Muggle village and then abandoned in one of the manor rooms when the battle started. “It had some very good concealment spells on it,” Draco said, with a touch of dry humour, for all his voice shook. “I think it’s meant to stay where it is, but beyond that-”

“It’ll suck the life out of anything inside,” Harry said, assessing; he’d seen similar things, although admittedly on much smaller scales. “Very slowly, and probably painfully. Where are your parents, and the house elves?” 

There was a pause before Draco replied. “Most of the elves scattered, when we had- guests; I got the few left out when the trap triggered. My parents are in France. Mother thought it best to go for a- visit.” Some quality in his voice made Harry turn; Draco was looking at him, expression only half visible in the gloom, and Harry didn’t think he wanted to figure it out just then.

“Good,” he said instead, choosing to ignore the hesitations before Draco had said _guests_ and _visit_. “There’s a way to get rid of it, but I- we’ll have to go inside. Are the wards still up?” He’d been invited into the grounds, not the house; he was pretty sure, from last time, that the wards were layered. The invitation for the interview had covered the downstairs, but now-- 

“I’ll invite you in.” Draco’s hands grasped his shoulders; he said something in- it was Latin, maybe, and kissed Harry once on each cheek.

Harry stepped back, flustered. “What was that?”

“An invitation into my home,” Draco said steadily, dropping his hands, wand appearing in one. “All of it. Let’s go.”

It took the rest of the night and most of the next day to get rid of the spell, which turned out to be several spells knitted together. Their shields only held up for so long before they got worn away and they had to get outside for a break, but eventually Draco unravelled one knot, and Harry found another, and then the whole thing broke up with an awful stench and got blown away by the breeze.

They stared at each other for a long moment, exhausted and filthy from wandering through the manor top to bottom to hunt down the knots holding the spell together; there were things that needed dealing with, that Harry had seen and shuddered over, but not yet. Then Draco dropped his last shield and reached out for Harry’s arm; he dropped his own in time to stop Draco getting burnt fingers, and let himself be led. 

 

^^

 

At some point he woke up enough to say, “why did you ask me,” to the room in general. Draco stirred next to him, muttered, “because I knew you wouldn’t ask questions first,” and slid back into sleep before Harry could reply.

When he woke up again it was to the smell of rain and fresh earth coming through the open window, Draco curled up tightly next to him, all blond hair and pale skin, robes covered in smudges of dirt where he lay on top of the bedcovers. Harry’s own weren’t much better, and his mouth felt like something had died in it; he didn’t dare raise a hand to check on his own hair.

A bit of poking around and a helpful portrait led him to the bathroom, once he’d slid out of bed without waking Draco, and the sight of a colossal bath even made him feel cheerful. It was almost dawn, he realised, washing his hair in something that smelled faintly of mint and had bubbles that giggled when they popped; he had no idea what day, though. It didn’t seem to matter.

A drawer slid out to show off twenty pairs of pajamas when he finally dragged himself out of the bath, toothbrush and toothpaste in a cupboard that flicked open once he was dressed; several different combs and brushes came out of another drawer, one at a time, until one he recognised from Care of Magical Creatures was left. He glared, but it did work.

Draco grumbled when Harry prodded him out of bed, but he went down the hall to clean up too, coming back in pajamas made of something soft and elegant, hair clean and mussed. He all but fell back into the bed Harry had remade, asking another portrait for directions to a horrifyingly large cupboard full of linens, and promptly fell asleep even before Harry could join him.

They slept until late morning, when Harry woke first again, feeling hungry enough to eat a whole cow, or at least most of one. He nudged Draco until he woke up.

“What?”

“Breakfast?” Harry said, trying not to sound pathetic. It didn’t work, if Draco’s glare was any indication, but Draco must’ve been as hungry as he was, because he rolled away to ring a bell on the bedside table. “How sodding lazy are you,” Harry demanded, because that was a new low even for _Malfoy_ , except then Draco rolled back over and kissed him gently. 

“Eat,” Draco said, like he hadn’t just gone completely insane, “and leave me alone.” He curled back up in the blankets and fell asleep again. 

Harry had a nasty ten minutes of panicking, until the smell of toast and bacon coming from the little table by the window got the better of him - the elves had come back then - and by the time he’d finished breakfast the panic had gone, pretty much. Draco stumbled over after half an hour and drank three cups of tea in a row, pausing only for breath and to thank Harry for loading up his plate. 

Neither of them mentioned the kiss, if Draco even remembered at all, and eventually breakfast was over. Harry’s robes had reappeared on a stand, clean and ironed, so once he was dressed there wasn’t much more to say. Draco walked him down, still in his pajamas and a warm cloak, looking worse for wear but better than he had when he’d stood on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place.

At the door Harry paused, turning to look back into the manor. “If you want,” he started, but that wouldn’t do. “I want to help,” which didn’t cover everything he wanted, not by half, but it was a start.

Draco looked at him, then back into the house as well. “Alright,” he said. “I’ve put barriers on a lot of the stuff that needs two people to deal with it, but there’s- there’s things that-" 

“I know,” Harry said, because even if he didn’t, he remembered the glimpses he’d seen traipsing round trying to remove the wasting spell, and he could imagine. “I’ve got to go to Kent tomorrow, but after that?”

“Certainly,” Draco said, formal and a little stiff despite the pajamas, but he meant it anyway, Harry could tell, so that was alright.

Harry yelled for Kreacher when he got in, before he could forget again, and was gratifyingly surprised when the house elf popped into view immediately. Groceries were delivered monthly, it seemed, and no one had ever thought to cancel them.

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“Mistress had an account,” was all Kreacher could, or would, say, and Harry had a sudden vision of a bill running to the thousands of galleons. The tiny pantry that Molly used opened up into several rooms when he flung the doors open, milk bottles rocking in its haste; boxes of vegetable had a name stamped on the crates, and he Floo’d through to Mulgraney & Family, Greengrocers without thinking.

“Er,” Harry said, because he’d panicked, and now he realised the clerks were all staring. “I’m here about the Black account?”

That and his name seemed to do the trick; one of the clerks crooked a finger at a shelf, and a ledger came sliding out, pages flicking open until they reached the last entry. “What seems to be the problem, sir?”

“Um, there’s no problem, I just-” _think I might owe you a lot of money_ didn’t seem polite, somehow, not in a shop where the clerks were dressed in neater robes than him. “I’ve inherited the account, and wanted to see what the arrangement is?” He tried to keep the upward inflection out, but it’d been a long few days, and most of him still wanted to be curled up in bed next to Draco.

“Ah, I see.” A look of understanding came across the clerk’s face. “How about I explain.”

So that was alright too, in the end; no massive bill, just a small chunk out of a standing account each month. He did cancel some of the weirder things on the order, considering that he wouldn’t be eating caviar or pickled blue-crested kettipiper eggs any time soon, but it was nice to have the other things, so he left the rest, and Floo’d back home to get some more sleep.

 

^^

 

The job in Kent went wrong almost immediately, when Ron got hit in the leg by some kind of gargoyle curse; they stopped it before he turned completely to stone, but it didn’t get any better from there. They got back to the Ministry at dawn, two days late, Ron dragging his mostly stone leg behind him, and Harry wincing when the weight of Ron’s arm over his shoulder pulled at the deep scratches down his back. 

He left Ron with Hermione to fix and fuss over, showered, and Apparated straight to Malfoy Manor. Draco met him at the gate with a half-hearted sneer and a, “bit late aren’t you, Potter,” but then he jerked his head towards the gardens around the other side of the house. Moving bodies wasn’t Harry’s favourite thing in the world, but he’d done it enough to be practiced at it. They found a rhythm: moving the grass and the soil, casting a shroud charm to keep the things in one piece, before transferring them to the mausoleum Draco pointed out to him.

There weren’t many; the fire had probably got rid of the majority, although one was too many in Harry’s opinion. They were in bad condition, all of them, as if they’d been broken up before they were dead and crammed into smaller holes.

“Did they-” Harry started, but he didn’t finish. He knew a little, still dreamed about hearing Hermione’s screams and woke up yelling himself, but that paled in comparison to having had to live with it for as long as Draco had.

Draco shook his head. “Nagini.” He couldn’t seem to manage any more; it was the most they’d ever talked about what had happened in the manor. Harry gave him a rough hug, which seemed to startle him, and they finished up before it got too dark to see. He spent the night again, in a guest room, but woke up reaching for something in the too empty bed.

Harry woke late; he Floo’d Shacklebolt from the drawing room next morning, made his report and got the day off to recover. He stayed at the manor and spent it hunched over a dozen trinkets, warped and spelled into traps; none of them could be blasted for risk of setting the trap off, so they had to take them apart by hand, carefully. Draco was better at the delicate spellwork, but Harry could see the bigger picture, how the spells knitted together to make a malicious whole.

“We should go out for dinner,” Draco said abruptly just as it was going dark, as if he couldn’t stand being in the house any longer. “Several of the better restaurants in London have reopened, we’ll be able to get a table.”

“Fine by me.” Harry stretched, working out a knot in his spine from being hunched over the dining room table most of the afternoon. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten out properly, not just a plate of something in a pub with some of the other Aurors, but somewhere he could be confident no one would ask about the war, or the Battle of Hogwarts. 

“You’ll have to change, of course,” Draco added, still looking flawless in tailored robes himself, not a smudge of grease anywhere.

Harry looked down. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” He thought Draco was going to say something snide when he turned around, but instead his eyebrows went up, like he was seeing Harry’s clothes properly for the first time since they’d started working. The house elves had cleaned and pressed them again, so he didn’t look shabby, and at some point he’d started to dress like a wizard, not just a Muggle child wearing someone else’s hand-me-downs.

Draco was wearing robes, but so was he; Aurors all wore robes, smart ones, not quite tailored like Draco’s but still a good fit, and the ones today were clean, free of burns or stains. It had seemed wrong to wear jeans under them, and there was a shop on Diagon Alley that did wizarding clothes with protective spells woven in, so he’d popped in there after the week when his last decent pair of jeans had been ruined by a hex. These were something made to look like dragonhide, tough and fitted, spelled against pretty much any kind of damage.

The shirt was new too, but the boots were old ones, found right after he’d moved in, when he’d cleaned up the master bedroom and spent a day polishing the wardrobe. He’d only wanted it to open up enough to put some clothes away, but it had finally swung open to reveal a rail full of robes in every colour, some glittering with embroidery and precious stones he was reasonably sure cost more than the Dursley’s car. He’d pushed the whole lot sideways to free up some space, which took five minutes, and the shelves of shoes had come out last of all.

He’d picked the boots mostly because his trainers were falling apart, second-hand anyway and disintegrating after getting covered in spitting toad slime. The leather was soft and a little creased, clearly used, the heel slightly worn down, but they’d fitted, and looked good with the robes, he thought; so did Draco, if the look Harry was getting meant anything.

“You’ll do,” was all Draco said right then, but when they were at dinner he abruptly said, “if you cut your hair you’d look halfway decent,” which for Draco was a compliment. Harry gulped down too much wine and asked for a barber, half-strangled and awkward.

 

^^

 

At first the Ministry felt cluttered and crowded after a day spent in the quiet of the Manor working with Draco, until Harry gave himself a mental shake and told himself to settle down. A delegation of French wizards arrived the same day he got back from sorting out a rogue giant; they looked immaculate in their Auror robes, and he irritably fire-called Kreacher to have some fresh ones sent over.

When they popped up on his desk Harry groaned, but he was running late for the meeting anyway, so he pulled them on and ran.

It was productive, as meetings went; the French Aurors had already been helpful in tracking down several Death Eaters who’d fled the country, and now they were hoping to locate a couple more who thought having estates in Europe made them safe from arrest and trial. At the end Harry spent some time chatting, catching up with those he’d already worked with and meeting those he hadn’t.

Shacklebolt was talking to the last of the wizards, a stranger, and he introduced them when Harry made his way over.

“Harry, this is Michel Ouvrard. He handles one of the Auror offices in the south of France.”

“A pleasure,” the tall man said, shaking the hand Harry held out. Shacklebolt picked up the conversation and Harry listened, until eventually Michel shook the Minister’s hand and his own again. He went to rejoin the rest of his team, then turned back, looking at Harry.

“I had the pleasure of seeing the Malfoys recently,” Michel said, as if they’d been at the same society event as him and not tucked away quietly in their French chateau.  

Harry nodded, not sure what to say. “I see.”

“They’re a very old family in France as well, of course.” Something in his tone sent Harry straight back to being eleven years old, stood on the steps of Hogwarts and facing down a sneering pureblood child. “I understand you see a fair bit of their son,” Michel added, as if he’d read Harry’s mind.

Suddenly Harry was glad of the robes Kreacher had picked, with their sweeping skirts and tightly fitted sleeves. The dark green fabric, black embroidery, and silver clasps down the front from throat to waist were a bit much, maybe, but against Michel’s faint sneer they gave him some of the Black arrogance. 

“From time to time,” he said icily, meaning to imply _he’s my friend and I’ll punch you if you badmouth him_ , but it came out a little bit more _we’re doing up a house together and I’m looking at rings_ , if the way Shacklebolt suddenly looked interested in the ceiling was anything to go by.

Except maybe it was true, he thought, taking in Michel’s sudden narrow-eyed glance flicker over him; after all, he was wearing Draco’s colours.

 

^^

 

The corridors in Grimmauld Place looked better without the clutter of paintings everywhere, and positively cheerful once he figured out what to do with the house elf heads, but now he’d sorted most of the rooms out he could see where the panelling was faded or cracked, the wood warped, and there were what looked like old hex marks in places. Removing those looked like a lot more work than the floors had been; Draco snorted and said as much when he Floo’d for help. 

“You can strip the wood - with something designed to neutralise anything left of the hexes - repair it, and then re-varnish,” he said, sat on the flagstones in the main hall of the manor, chin in one hand, “like you’ve done with the floorboards. Or you can rip it all out and replace it.”

“Wouldn’t replacing it be better?”

“Of course, if you can find someone to supply you with the right kind of wood; very difficult these days, with the dwarves refusing to trade and the wood-elves layering protections over their trees like never before.” At Harry’s incredulous look Draco sighed. “I’m having to repair some of the panelling here, I’ll send you a list of places that might be able to help.”

He didn’t, though, so one evening a couple days later Harry Apparated over to the manor and knocked. A house elf opened the door, tiny and dressed in a pillowcase with the Malfoy crest on. “Master is upstairs,” it piped when Harry asked, and stood back to let him in.

Draco was kneeling on the floor of the sixth room Harry stuck his head into, struggling with something unseen, wand discarded on the floor beside him. “Don’t just stand there,” he snapped, when Harry knocked. “Powdered asphodel and ground dandelion root, from the cupboard in the hall. Now!”

Harry twisted, seeing a door yawn open further along; he grabbed the two bottles and ran back to Draco’s side. He was fighting with two silver chains, bolted to the wall, which kept jerkily trying to wrap their cuffs around his wrist; one had already managed it. Draco grabbed the bottles and doused both chains with the contents, pulling his freed wrist away with a sharp hiss when the metal began to bubble. Harry caught him before he fell over.

“For Muggleborns, I think,” Draco said calmly, as though there wasn’t a pool of tarnished melted silver on the carpet, or a deep scar in the wooden panelling. “Not awful as things go, but still. They don’t go with the décor.” He started trembling violently and threw up, vomit hissing when it struck the molten metal, then sagged back against Harry.

“How do you do it,” Draco asked after a while. Harry had shifted them so they sat against the wall, away from the mess on the carpet, Draco leaning against his side with Harry’s arm around his shoulder, still trembling slightly, their legs tangled together. “You don’t flinch, or throw up.”

“Something’s tried to kill me every year since I was eleven,” Harry said wearily, head tipped back to look at the ceiling. The carvings moved if he watched long enough, he’d discovered. “I think I stopped getting sick after the basilisk.”

They stayed there talking about nothings until Harry’s arse went numb, at which point he dragged them over to a low sofa instead, Draco curling up underneath his arm again without commenting. A house elf brought food, hot pastries and pale blue cider; Draco smiled wanly when Harry made a face at it. “Just drink it,” he said, “it’s goblin brewed, one of the few things they make that’s not only edible but delicious.”

They cleared up the mess on the floor once they’d eaten, Draco coaching him through the necessary spells to remove the magic-corrupted metal. The wood was marked, badly, and the carpet had a hole in it; Draco shrugged.

“I can reweave it,” he said, but he was looking more at the holes in the panelling where the chains had been bolted. “Although somehow I don’t think I want to use this room any more.”

“No,” Harry said, “no, I think that’s fair.”

 

^^

 

It was early afternoon when Harry gave up, gathering his files into a heap. “I’m off,” he told Ron, sticking his head around the office door. “Any longer and I’ll fall asleep. The bloody hell is that?” 

Ron shook his head. “Don’t ask.” His hands were covered in something glutinous that changed colour every few seconds; Harry watched, fascinated. “Mulgrew and Hooper found it in a shop someone reported was selling Dark artefacts; doesn’t seem dangerous, but I can’t get it off." 

“Harry!” Hermione brushed past him, carrying books. “Oh, it’s changed again. And it smells like- strawberries?”

“Raspberries,” Ron said gloomily. “It was blackberries earlier.”

“Right, Harry said trying not to laugh. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Sometimes it wasn’t all torture and murder, he reflected, leaving the Ministry. They got the odd day of harmless weirdness; few and far between, admittedly, but they were there. He apparated, and found another bit of weirdness: Draco sat on the bottom step of the stairs up to Grimmauld Place, immaculately dressed in pale grey robes, looking painfully stiff and under control. 

“Draco?”

“I finished the cellars,” Draco said, and some of his composure slipped. “I needed to be- to not be there, for a while.”

Harry put a hand out and helped him stand, wordlessly passing them through the wards and into the house. He saw Draco glance at the bare panelling at the base of the stairs, but he didn’t say anything, moving up the stairs to the library without needing to ask the way. Harry followed, wondering if Draco would tell him about being here as a child, if he had any stories.

In the library there were several trinkets he’d pulled out, meaning to work on them when he has the time; Draco picked up a model of three fairies, outer robe already draped neatly over a chair, his wand in his other hand and a frown on his forehead. Harry watched for a moment, but the tension was bleeding out of Draco’s shoulders, so he settled down to work as well.

Only when Kreacher began laying out two settings for dinner, muttering about pureblood appreciation, did Harry look up and realise Draco wasn’t in the library any more. He found him stood in the doorway to the small parlour, one hand tight on the doorknob. Harry peered in over his shoulder. The room was quiet, the old Black dinner service and silverware neatly arranged and gleaming, the older, heavy furniture polished to a high gloss, and the house elf heads hung in four neat lines either side of the window; Kreacher tended to them every day, humming gently. 

The portraits were all dozing in the late afternoon sun, the one of Mrs Black hanging opposite the fireplace; her cap was on neatly, her hair tidily arranged, and a child from one of the medieval paintings opposite sat holding wool for her as she knitted.

“I don’t understand you,” Draco said softly. He half-turned his head towards Harry, but his eyes remained fixed on Walburga. “You- you _hate_ her kind, the pureblood obsessives.”

“You were like that once,” Harry pointed out. “I don’t hate you anymore. Much,” he added, to make Draco smile.

“True enough,” Draco said, turning a little further so his nose brushed across Harry’s cheek. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, stood there in the warm, early evening sun and the quiet, aware of how close they were. One of the portraits coughed, and Draco turned away.

Walburga roused enough to notice them, her eyes narrowing, but she just curled her lip in a sneer and sniffed. Harry didn’t trust her an inch, but they had an understanding now, and Draco was as pure as you could get, so he figured he didn’t need to reach for his wand. Draco inclined his head to her and stepped back, taking Harry with him until he could close the door softly.

“The other portraits,” Draco said, when they were back in the library. “They’re all relations as well, aren’t they?”

“Mostly.” Harry sat down at the table Kreacher had laid, moving the music box he’d been working on; Draco settled at his right hand. “The Wizarding Portrait Gallery took some, when I asked, but those’re the worst of the ones who wouldn’t leave the house, so I moved them in there.”

Kreacher began to serve, a spread worthy of a pureblood visitor, and the library went quiet for a while. Afterwards Harry went back to finish the music box, winding it up to sing a delicate little tune that filled the room, no trace of Dark magic anywhere in it, and put it back on a shelf. He turned to reports, tidying up loose ends of paperwork and making notes from interviews; Draco remained a still point, curled up elegantly with a book, an after dinner cup of coffee by his side.

“How did you even manage to shift her,” Draco asked suddenly. It was the first time he’d spoken in some time, and when Harry looked, the book hung still in his hands, pages unturned. “There was a permanent sticking charm on the frame, Mother mentioned it.”

“I set her on fire until she agreed to move,” Harry said absently, trying to decide if he could be bothered to check on a report of  blast-ended skrewt being kept in a garden, or if Hooper could do it. “There’s a scorch mark on the frame still.”

“And that _worked_ ,” Draco said, incredulous sitting up. “Permanent sticking charms are exactly what they sound like.”

Harry shrugged, looking up. “She did it, don’t ask me how. I think she was impressed that I was going to burn her.”

“Would you have?” There was an edge in Draco’s voice, an echo of the teenaged sneer that used to drive Harry to anger, to thinking of all the ways he could get rid of it. “Really? And this place along too?”

“All the way down to ashes,” Harry said, anger flickering through him. “It’s just a house; there’s nothing here for me. I’ve never had a home worth saving, not that I can remember.” It was true and it wasn’t, but Draco didn’t need to know which bit was the truth.

For a long moment Draco didn’t say anything, then he stood abruptly, moving to the window. Outside the weather was overcast and dull, a fog pressing against the house; the park opposite was almost invisible, the odd passer-by vague shapes hurrying out of the cold and damp. Draco braced his hands on the wide windowsill, looking out.

“Sometimes I forget that about you.”

“Forget what?”

Draco laughed, a soft, uncertain sound. “That you’re a wizard.”

Harry snorted, standing from the sofa and moving to stand behind Draco; close enough to see his reflection against the window pane. “You've had firsthand experience of that,” he pointed out, although it wasn’t something he liked thinking about. 

Draco rolled his eyes, but his hands went white-knuckled on the windowsill when Harry took another step closer. “Potter, you know about six spells, and two of those are _Expelliarmus_. You don’t know the first thing about wizarding society, or politics, or the best place to buy robes.” 

“What’s your point--” 

“But,” and Draco shuddered as Harry closed the last gap between them, “you’d have burnt down this house if it meant getting rid of that old harridan’s portrait. You killed, in the war. And you’d do it again if you had to, I know you would.”

“I had-” _no choice_ , but that wasn’t true, not really. It was easy to admit it here, in the Most Noble House of Black, with Draco Malfoy of all people: how easily some of the worst spells had come to him, how easy it was to subdue the house once he started thinking like it was his right to live there. How difficult it sometimes was to remember he was an Auror and arrest people, instead of leaving them in pieces.

“That’s what I mean.” Draco said softly. He’d turned around to look at Harry, eyes intent on his, understanding all the dark, grimy bits of Harry that he kept tucked away. He waved a hand encompassing the house, the room, the two of them. “You’re more like us, behind the politics and pureblood rhetoric, than you’d like to admit.”

“I know what I am,” Harry said, and meant it.

He kissed Draco this time, a small thing, just a brush of his lips across Draco’s in the silence of the library.

 

^^

 

Harry didn’t see him for a while after that. Some information came in about a pocket of Dark supporters hiding out in Wales, and he spent most of his time working on that, going back to Grimmauld Place to sleep and check Kreacher hadn’t reverted to insanity again. There was no time to Apparate to the manor, even to say hello, and even if he had Harry wasn’t sure what he’d say. _Move in with me_ was about as ludicrous as things got, so he got his head down and tried not to destroy too much of the Brecon Beacons.

He did go to a barber’s after all, when the return trip from the mission to Wales took him past one of Draco’s recommended shops. The wizard at the desk pursed his lips when Harry walked in, hair a mess from camping out for a week. He sat and let the man work, glancing in the mirror only when the barber stepped back with a satisfied nod.

Shorn short on the sides, and layered on the top, slicked back into a high peak and without the glasses, he looked- he looked like a grown man, instead of a child pretending. It flopped down into his eyes after the first shower, except now it looked deliberate; three people at work propositioned him, and even Ron dragged up the old idea of having recruitment posters made up showing his face.

Draco said nothing next time he popped over, but his gaze raked over Harry like a physical thing.

 

^^ 

 

Christmas came and went. Harry spent it with the Weasley’s and Hermione, glad to have their warm affection tumbling around him for a few days. He sent a gift to Draco by way of a discreet shop in Diagon Alley, a delicate set of cursebreaking tools, and wasn’t surprised to get one himself in return; the elegant wrapping paper revealed a hefty book about the history of wizarding houses.

“Unusual choice,” Hermione said, eyebrows raised, by which she meant _why is Draco Malfoy sending you presents_. Harry half expected her to insist on counter-spelling it, and was grateful when Ron pulled her away to ask about her degree again. It sat in his suitcase for the rest of his visit; he wanted to read it in Grimmauld Place, in the finished drawing room by the fire, winter snow outside and Draco curled up next to him.

 

^^

 

The new year started badly, with an attack on a Muggle village by two werewolves. Three people died and half a dozen more were injured before the Aurors could get there, although they were all bleakly relieved when the mediwizards confirmed only two were bitten. 

“Don’t know which is worse,” Hooper said, looking at the unconscious victims. “Being dead or being a werewolf.” 

“Being bloody dead,” Ron said shortly, sharing a look with Harry. They did their best, and a lot of the other Aurors were fine, but werewolf prejudice was alive and well, even with Lupin’s heroic legacy still fresh. 

The clean up took days, no one wanting to rush the careful healings and delicate _obliviates_. The two bitten, a little girl and her uncle, were quiet as Harry explained. Neither of them had any magic, and he knew the statistics; Muggles were more likely to die on their first full moon. Hermione wanted to study it for her dissertation, among other things; Ron reckoned she’d come out with three degrees, not one, but he knew that wouldn’t help either of them. 

Draco owled right after he got back from Little Farnham, a note wrapped tightly around a little bottle of Swiggleton’s Finest Dreamless Sleep Elixir. The parchment didn’t say much, a query after how he was and a reminder to eat before he took a swig of the elixir, but he read it twice through with a kind of hunger.

 

^^

 

The International Wizengamot chose the end of January to ask for an audit, meaning clerks were everywhere underfoot, and had the Aurors tearing their hair out trying to keep up with new cases at the same time as trying to get their record keeping in order. It came at a bad time; one of the werewolves responsible for the Little Farnham attack was still at large, and not a single one of them wanted to be sat doing paperwork when they could have been hunting him down.

It was chaos, tempers fraying badly, until eventually Shacklebolt called a meeting with all the Aurors. “We should be out there,” Harry snapped, when he got the meeting request, just back from an unsuccessful broom search over Dartmoor, and Dulcey flinched.

“I _know_ , Harry. But even Shacklebolt can’t argue with the Wizengamot, they think he’s too liberal as it is, and if they replace him now we’ll lose so much progress.”

She looked so fraught and stressed that Harry grit his teeth and nodded, instead of throwing his tea mug at the wall like he wanted to. “I’ll be along when I’ve cleaned up,” he said, and she rushed off to round up Ron and some of the others, leaving him to pull himself together.

The robes were okay, once he’d dried out the damp from flying in the clouds; an old-fashioned set he’d grabbed from the wardrobe because his sets needed mending, all in black, but fine black brocade, the sort of thing Draco would wear. His hair was decent; he’d been to the barbers again just before the attack, so it was better than usual, just wet from the rain. Harry smoothed it back then ran, making it into the meeting room a bare moment before Shacklebolt walked in and the privacy wards went up. 

He got through the meeting without shouting at anyone, but it was a near thing; most of the other Aurors were equally on edge and wanting to be out searching, not listening to the Wizengamot clerks ask endless questions and not answer any of the Aurors’ own. When Shacklebolt finally let the wards up and closed the meeting he stalked out, wound tight and shaking with the effort of controlling himself.

Heading back down the corridor to his office, Harry caught his reflection in one of the windows and stopped still, looking. Lack of regular meals and hard flying had hollowed his cheeks somewhat, and the rain had slicked his hair back into the same high peak from the barber's; it looked stiff and sharp.

Underneath he looked hard and angry, eyes glittering without the glasses to hide them. He looked- He looked _vicious_ , everything else stripped away except the anger that had let him kill. Except this wasn’t the war anymore, there was no one he could kill, he needed something different- With a crack, he Apparated.

Draco’s face went from questioning to sharp when he opened the Manor door, eyes flicking over Harry where he stood on the steps in the cold. He moved away from the door and towards Harry, moving as if he didn’t realise he was doing it, and Harry felt _yes_ shudder through him.

“I want this,” he said, one hand reaching up to slide around the back of Draco’s neck and pull him in, the other wrapping around Draco’s wrist, cool skin under his fingers. Draco went very still. He didn’t say, _do you,_ because that wasn’t the point. He wanted, and either Draco would give, or he’d go home, back to Grimmauld Place, and probably destroy some furniture, if not the house itself.

“On one condition,” Draco said, and Harry narrowed his eyes. Draco’s free hand came up to grip onto the collar of his robes.

“What?” Draco’s hand twisted in the fabric at his throat, tightening the collar around his neck; not enough to hurt, but enough to make Harry yank Draco into a kiss, dark and deep, shoving a knee between Draco’s legs and pressing up when he widened them.

“We do this at your place,” Draco said breathlessly, breaking away, and for a long, hot second Harry fought against every instinct telling him to just take. The hand at his throat twisted a little tighter.

“Can you Apparate like this,” he asked Draco, leaning in and mouthing over his neck. “Because I’m hard as a rock and two seconds away from having you against the fireplace.”

“Fuck, _Harry_.”

Draco shoved him back with a groan and grabbed his hand, Apparating them both with a sharp _crack_. The wards at Grimmauld Place snapped aside to let them in, door slamming behind them with a bang fit to wake the neighbours. Harry let Draco get three steps up the staircase before shoving him against the panelling and fitting their mouths together again, hands keeping Draco’s pinned at his sides.

Draco let him, then pushed Harry back with flare of wandless magic and a sharp grin, racing up the stairs like they were back at school and competing again; Harry tripped him at the top and they tumbled over until Draco landed on top, charming Harry’s trousers open and mouthed over his cock with hot breath, sending Harry arching up away from the floor, nails digging into the carpet.

They fucked in the library, the sofa obligingly widening out to accommodate them, magic stripping away their clothes and slicking Harry’s fingers, Draco underneath him, swearing at the first press of fingers and demanding more. Neither of them were careful; Harry pressed into him too hard and too fast but Draco pulled him in closer, legs around Harry’s waist and his teeth sunk into Harry’s shoulder when he came.

The hunger hadn’t gone away, after; Harry drifted careful fingers over the marks he’d made on Draco’s pale skin and wanted, fiercely, to keep making them until there was no place left on Draco’s body that he hadn’t touched, tasted, bitten. 

“Merlin’s breath,” Draco said eventually, shivering when Harry pulled out and away. “That was worth Apparating for.”

“I’m amazed you didn’t splinch us.”

“So am I.” Draco stretched, naked and marked, every inch of him something Harry wanted to possess. “I should have let you take me against the fireplace.” 

“Another time.” Harry reached down and pulled Draco up, pressing a swift kiss against his lips when Draco winced. Down the hall to his bedroom, neither of them paying attention anything except kissing again, deep and intent. Several portraits gasped, making Draco pull away to snigger; they hadn’t bothered with clothes.

“They haven’t seen anything this scandalous in _years_ ,” Draco said tartly, when Harry stopped to glare; he licked a stripe up Harry’s neck when Hezekiah Black began to scold them, tongue curling in a wickedly hot flicker around his ear.

“And they won’t be seeing it again,” Harry said firmly, closing the door, shutting out the rising gossip and keeping Draco’s laughter inside.

 

^^

 

In the morning Harry woke to Draco straddling him, one hand tilting his chin up for a kiss, the other working steadily behind him, slick sounds loud in the quiet bedroom. He groaned.

“Morning.” 

Draco grinned, sharp and tousled, biting at Harry’s lower lip. “You don’t have to be at the Ministry today, do you?” He gasped when Harry’s hand closed around his wrist, tugging his hand away and replacing Draco’s fingers with his own. 

“No,” Harry said, watching the curve of Draco’s neck above him. He thought he’d probably skip straight to using Dark magic against anyone who tried to take him away from this, and couldn’t feel any guilt for thinking it. Draco moaned when he slid three fingers in and curled them, arm shaking, Draco’s eyes closing and his head tipping back.

“Why here,” Harry asked suddenly, running his free hand down Draco’s side to see him shiver, thumb pressing into a bite mark on his ribs. Draco slitted his eyes open.

“Because it’s a home,” he said, breath catching. “Because you made it a home, and I wanted to have you here.”

Harry leaned up and kissed him, biting sharply on his lower lip when Draco slid down onto him in a smooth movement. They rocked together, slower this time, but as hungry as they’d been in the library, Draco’s hands tight in Harry’s hair and his mouth hot, Harry’s hips snapping up with what little leverage he had.

 

^^

 

The Ministry did need him that day after all, and Shacklebolt gave him barely enough time to grab his travelling kit before sending him to Scotland. He Floo’d up to the Edinburgh office and snatched five minutes to scribble a note and send an owl from there to Draco, before getting on his broom and flying overland to Achlean. 

It was the middle of nowhere, perfect for a meeting between two Death Eaters still on the loose, but it didn’t have much in the way of comfort while Harry waited. He made camp and settled in to wait, hoping it wouldn’t be too long before his warning spells were triggered and he could bring the two men in.

Night gradually fell over the forest, leaving him the dark with nothing to do but think. His thoughts drifted to Grimmauld Place, now pretty much finished; he wanted to replace some of the heavy furniture with more modern things, and there was some redecorating that needed doing, but he _loved_ it. It was his home, not a remnant of the Most Noble House of Black’s, and he missed it fiercely.

Part of that was because there was snow everywhere, he knew, but it was also the first and only home he’d ever had that was his, that he could walk into, shut the door, and not have anyone bother him if he didn’t want them to.

And it was worthy of being a wizarding townhouse again, if Draco wanted.

The Manor wasn’t somewhere he could live, not happily; he’d listened to Hermione get tortured there, and damn near died himself. It almost made him feel sick, the idea of it, despite having spent almost as much time fixing it up as his own house the last few months.

Hard on the heels of that came the memory of Draco sat alone burning a heap of bones in his own garden, because they were too mixed up and magic-corrupted to send back to grieving families. He swallowed hard, snow forgotten, and was so lost in thought that he almost missed the two Death Eater’s arriving. 

They talked for a while, hunched figures in hooded cloaks; Harry was too far away to hear them, and edging closer without being heard took all his concentration. One of them cast a faint _lumos_ as he got close enough to stun them, and showed not just the paper in his hand for a brief moment, but their faces as well.

The split second of recognition made Harry hesitate, and Rowle began to Apparate; Harry’s anti-jinx caught him just in time, and then it was a fight, their spells lighting up the Scottish highlands for several miles.

 

^^

 

One and a half prisoners was okay, according to Shacklebolt. Rowle would heal, and be fit to stand trial; Travers might not make it, but Harry knew his record, and didn’t really care if he was honest. The charms in the little bugs he’d scattered around the area - from Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, bizarrely - had heard enough of their conversation to be used as solid evidence, so he handed in his report and headed for home. 

All he wanted was to get out of his wet robes and go to sleep, somewhere with a dry bed, warm fire, and tea on the bedside table. Grimmauld Place had all three, plus one Draco Malfoy stood in his bedroom door when he woke up.

“You set the wards to allow me in,” Draco said, stripping off his gloves. Harry blinked up at him, suddenly aware they hadn’t spoken since Draco had ridden him to a blinding orgasm half an hour before Shacklebolt’s owl had tapped at the window. He sat up and swung his legs out of bed, glad he’d kept his boxers on; Draco’s expression was forbidding.

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“After the library.” Harry scrubbed a hand over his face, and through the tangled mess of his hair. “Look, Draco, I’m sorry I left like that-”

Draco’s cloak dropped to the floor, followed by his robes and the rest; he straddled Harry’s lap and bent to kiss him thoroughly, until Harry was lightheaded and fell back against the bed, Draco following to nip at his jaw.

“I take it you don’t mind,” he said, pulling enough brain cells together to get a good handful of Draco’s arse. “About me going off like that, I mean.”

“Not in the slightest,” Draco said, leaning back. “I got your owl. I’d prefer if it you didn’t risk getting cursed on a daily basis, obviously, but not enough to ask you to stop doing your job.”

“Oh,” Harry said, lust-addled and not really sure what to do with that. Draco’s expression shifted to something darker and hungrier.

“I’ll just have to give you a reason to take more care,” he said, and Harry felt his own expression twist into something hungry.

Draco fucked him slowly and thoroughly, until Harry was boneless and satisfyingly exhausted; afterwards he fell asleep between one kiss and the next.

He woke to an empty bed, the longed-for tea tray nowhere to be seen. Grabbing a fresh pair of pajama bottoms Harry wandered out into the hall, now twice as long and with double the amount of rooms coming off it; Grimmauld Place had given up most of its secrets, although he still hadn’t discovered if there was a proper garden or not.  

Draco was curled up on the sofa in the library, which seemed to be his favorite place; the fire was going, and a table had walked itself over to stand next to him, a breakfast spread and the missing tea tray resting on its gleaming top. He wore a plain t-shirt and a pair of loose pajama bottoms, looking as casual as Harry had ever seen him; the faint pattern on the pajamas was familiar, after a moment.

“Are those mine,” Harry asked, affronted. They looked like they might have been, but they’d been transfigured into a pair considerably more elegant and expensive-looking. 

“I didn’t see the point in dressing properly,” Draco said, waving a dismissive hand. “One of the house elves will bring my things over later." 

“What?”

“I’m moving in, of course.”

Harry looked at him sharply. Draco had said it with the usual air of entitled arrogance, like he said everything from _surely you’re not wearing Muggle clothes again_ to _fuck me harder_ , but there was a faint shake in it, the same as there’d been in Harry’s office, and right after he’d got rid of the spelled chains.

“I suppose I should visit your parents,” Harry said after a moment, dropping down onto the sofa. He stole a piece of toast off Draco’s plate and took a bite, holding out a cup for the teapot to fil. Draco gave him a sidelong look. “If we’re moving in together.”

“My mother would appreciate that.” The breakfast things were suddenly very interesting to Draco; he busied himself with lifting covers and carefully selecting a plateful.

Harry glanced out of the window; snow had begun to fall, great fat flakes of it. He grinned, and turned back to distract Draco from the bacon by tilting his chin up and taking a kiss. His book about wizarding houses was somewhere around; he’d dig it out and get started, once Draco had finished pinning him to the sofa.  

 

 

♥

**Author's Note:**

> Dipping my toes into the very shallow end of the HP fandom here, with some fixit fic; I don't really belong, and will now be returning back to my usual plan of not messing around with fandoms I'm not even in.
> 
> Unbetaed, any and all mistakes are my own (sorry).


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